Arriving at the great mound of the temple of the sun, with some difficulty they climb to its summit. So dense is the shade that it is almost dark. Here are two graves, in which sleep the remains of the grand-parents of these two beautiful and lovely women. All around are cultivated fields clothed with rich crops, luxuriant with the promise of abundance. At its base flows the little creek, gliding and gabbling along over pure white sand. Sweet Alice! How sad she seems! She stood at the grave's side, and, looking down, seemed lost in pious reverie. Every feature spoke reverence for the dead. Her cousin, too, was silent; and if not reverent, was not gay. He, their gallant, was respectfully silent, when Alice said, without lifting her eyes:
"I wonder if La Salle ever stood here? This is holy ground. No spot on earth has a charm for me like this. I am in the temple. I see the attentive, watchful priest feeding there (as she pointed) the holy fire, and yonder, with upturned eyes, the great lawgiver worshipping his god, as he comes up from his sleep, bringing day, warmth, light, and life. Was not this worship pure? Was it not natural? The sun came in the spring and awoke everything to life. The grass sprang from the ground and the leaves clothed the trees; the birds chose their mates and the flowers gladdened the fields; everything was redolent of life, and everything rejoiced. He went away in the winter, and death filled the land. There were no leaves, no grass, no flowers. All nature was gloomy in death. Could any but a god effect so much? The sun was their god; his temple was the sky, and his holy fire burned on through all time. Beautiful conception! Who can say it is not the true faith?"
"To the unlettered mind, it was," answered the young gentleman; "because the imagination could only be aided by the material presented to the natural eye. Science opens the eye of faith. It teaches that the sun is only the instrument, and faith looks beyond for the Creator. To such the Indian's faith cannot be the true one. The ignorance of one sees God in the instrument, and his thoughts clothe him with the power of the Creator, and his heart worships God in sincerity, and to him it is the true faith. But to the educated, scientific man, who knows the offices of the sun, it appears as it is, only the creature of the unseen, unknown God, and to this God he lifts his adoration and prayers, and to him this is the true faith."
"So, my philosopher, you believe, whatever lifts the mind to worship God is the true faith?"
"You put it strongly, Miss, and I will answer by a question. If in sincerity we invoke God's mercy, can the means that prompt the heart's devotion, reliance, and love, be wrong? His magnitude and perfection are a mystery to the untutored savage: he knows only what he sees. The earth to him, (as it was to the founders and patriarchs of our own faith,) is all the world. He has no idea that it is only one, and a small one of a numerous family, and can conceive only that the sun rules his world; gives life and death to everything upon the earth—but this inspires love and reverence for God. The scientific man sees in the sun only an attractive centre, and sees space filled with self-illuminating orbs, and reasoning from the known to the unknown, he believes these centres of attraction to planetary families, and the imagination stretches away through space filled with centres and revolving worlds, and each centre with its dependents revolving around one great centre, and this great centre he believes is God. His idea is only one step beyond the Indian's, and has only the same effect: it leads the heart to depend on and worship God."
"You are a heretic, and must like a naughty boy be made to read your Bible and go to Sunday-school, and be lectured and taught the true faith. Fy! fy! shall the heathen go to heaven? Where is the provision for him in the Bible? What are we to do with missions? If this be true, there is no need that we should be sending good men and dear, pious women to convert the Chinese, the Feejees, and the poor Africans so benighted that their very color is black, and the Australians, and New Georgians, to be roasted and eaten by the cannibals there. If they worship God in sincerity, you say that is all?"
"No, miss, faith without works is a futile reliance for heaven. It is the first necessity, and perhaps the next and greatest, is, to 'Do unto all what you would have all do unto you.' These are the words of the great Chinese philosopher, Confucius, and were taught four and a half centuries before Christ, yet we see Him teaching the same. This, as Confucius said, was the great cardinal duty of man, and all else was but a commentary upon this. This I fancy is all, at least it is very comprehensive. You tell me the traditions of the people who worshipped here say that this was a cardinal law unto them?"
"You, sir, have lived too long among the heathen, if you are not one already. You are like an August peach in July: you are turning, and in a little while will be ripe. You talk, as Uncle Toney says, like a book, and to me, like a new book, for yours are new thoughts to me. Cousin, does he not astonish you?"
"By no means; true, they are new thoughts; but they are natural thoughts, and I do not fear to listen to them—on the contrary, I could listen to them all day, and, Alice, I have often, very often, heard from you something like this."
"Nonsense, cousin, nonsense; I am orthodox, you know, and a good girl and love to go to church, especially when I have a becoming new dress."